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---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 08:43:47 -0700 From: RoadsEnd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: ctrl CTRL <[email protected]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ctrl] Fwd: [cia-drugs] It's no crude joke: this oil field grows even as it's tapped Begin forwarded message: > From: "Vigilius Haufniensis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: July 10, 2005 3:43:38 AM PDT > To: "gold currency warfare" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: "cia drugs" <[email protected]> > Subject: [cia-drugs] It's no crude joke: this oil field grows even > as it's tapped > Reply-To: [email protected] > > > http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pkt/2002m04/msg00120.htm > > Sunday, April 25, 1999 > It's no crude joke: this oil field grows even as it's tapped > By CHRISTOPHER COOPER > The Wall Street Journal > > HOUSTON - Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 330. > > Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the > coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And > for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 > discovery, Eugene Island 330's output peaked at about 15,000 > barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 > barrels a day. > > Then suddenly - some say almost inexplicably - Eugene Island's > fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now > producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed > to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. > > Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming > out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil > that gushed 10 years ago. > > All of which has led some scientists to a radical theory: Eugene > Island is rapidly refilling itself, perhaps from some continuous > source miles below the Earth's surface. That, they say, raises the > tantalizing possibility that oil may not be the limited resource it > is assumed to be. > > "It kind of blew me away," says Jean Whelan, a geochemist and > senior researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in > Massachusetts. Connected to Woods Hole since 1973, Whelan says she > considered herself a traditional thinker until she encountered the > phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, she says, "I believe there > is a huge system of oil just migrating" deep underground. > Conventional wisdom says the world's supply of oil is finite, and > that it was deposited in horizontal reservoirs near the surface in > a process that took millions of years. > > Since the economies of entire countries ride on the fundamental > notion that oil reserves are exhaustible, any contrary evidence > "would change the way people see the game, turn the world view > upside down," says Daniel Yergin, a petroleum futurist and industry > consultant in Cambridge, Mass. "Oil and renewable resource are not > words that often appear in the same sentence." > > Doomsayers to the contrary, the world contains far more recoverable > oil than was believed even 20 years ago. Between 1976 and 1996, > estimated global oil reserves grew 72 percent, to 1.04 trillion > barrels. Much of that growth came in the past 10 years, with the > introduction of computers to the oil patch, which made drilling for > oil more predictable. > > Still, most geologists are hard-pressed to explain why the world's > greatest oil pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its > reserves in the past 20 years, despite half a century of intense > exploitation and relatively few new discoveries. > > It would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric > plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in > the region, notes Norman Hyne, a professor at the University of > Tulsa in Oklahoma. > > "Off-the-wall theories often turn out to be right," he says. > > Even some of the most staid U.S. oil companies find the Eugene > Island discoveries intriguing. "These reservoirs are refilling with > oil," acknowledges David Sibley, a Chevron Corp. geologist who has > monitored the work at Eugene Island. Sibley cautions, however, that > much research remains to be done on the source of that oil. "At > this point, it's not black and white. It's gray," he says. > > Although the world has been drilling for oil for generations, > little is known about the nature of the resource or the underground > activities that led to its creation. And because even conservative > estimates say known oil reserves will last 40 years or more, most > big oil companies haven't concerned themselves much with hunting > for deep sources like the reservoirs scientists believe may exist > under Eugene Island. > > Economics never hindered the theorists, however. One, Thomas Gold, > a respected astronomer and professor emeritus at Cornell University > in Ithaca, N.Y., has held for years that oil is actually a > renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the Earth > under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. > > As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by > bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to > the dinosaurs, he says. > > While many scientists discount Gold's theory as unproved, "it made > a believer out of me," says Robert Hefner, chairman of Seven Seas > Petroleum Inc., a Houston firm that specializes in ultradeep > drilling and has worked with the professor on his experiments. > Seven Seas continues to use "conventional" methods in seeking > reserves, though the halls of the company often ring with dissent. > > "My boss and I yell at each other all the time about these > theories," says Russ Cunningham, a geologist and exploration > manager for Seven Seas who isn't sold on Gold's ideas. > > Knowing that clever theories don't fill the gas tank, Roger > Anderson, an oceanographer and executive director of Columbia > University's Energy Research Center in New York, proposed studying > the behavior of oil in a reservoir in hopes of finding a new way to > help companies vacuum up what their drilling was leaving behind. > > He focused on Eugene Island, a kidney-shaped subsurface mountain > that slopes steeply into the Gulf depths. About 80 miles off the > Louisiana coast, the underwater landscape surrounding Eugene Island > is otherworldly, cut with deep fissures and faults that > spontaneously belch gas and oil. > In 1985, as he stood on the deck of a shrimp boat towing an oil- > sniffing contraption through the area, Anderson pondered Eugene > Island's strange history. > > "Migrating oil and anomalous production. I sort of linked the two > ideas together," he says. > Five years later, the U.S. Department of Energy ponied up $10 > million to investigate the Eugene Island geologic formation, and > especially the oddly behaving field at its crest. A consortium of > companies leasing chunks of the formation, including such giants as > Chevron, Exxon Corp. and Texaco Corp., matched the federal grant. > > The Eugene Island researchers began their investigation about the > same time that 3-D seismic technology was introduced to the oil > business, allowing geologists to see promising reservoirs as a > cavern in the ground rather than as a line on a piece of paper. > > Taking the technology one step further, Anderson used a powerful > computer to stack 3-D images of Eugene Island on top of one > another. That resulted in a 4-D image, showing not only the > reservoir in three spatial dimensions, but showing also the > movement of its contents over time as PennzEnergy siphoned out oil. > > What Anderson noticed as he played his time-lapse model was how > much oil PennzEnergy had missed over the years. The remaining > crude, surrounded by water and wobbling like giant globs of Jell-O > in the computer model, gave PennzEnergy new targets as it reworked > Eugene Island. > What captivated scientists, though, was a deep fault in the bottom > corner of the computer scan that was gushing oil like a garden > hose. "We could see the stream," Anderson says. "It wasn't even > debated that it was happening." > > Woods Hole's Whelan, invited by Anderson to join the Eugene Island > investigation, postulated that superheated methane gas - a compound > that is able to absorb vast amounts of oil - was carrying crude > from a deep source below. The age of the crude pushed through the > stream, and its hotter temperature helped support that theory. The > scientists decided to drill into the fault. > > As prospectors, the scientists were fairly lucky. As researchers > they weren't. The first well they drilled hit natural gas, a pocket > so pressurized "that it scared us," Anderson says; that well is > still producing. The second stab, however, collapsed the fault. > "Some oil flowed. I have 15 gallons of it in my closet," Anderson > says. But it wasn't successful enough to advance Whelan's theory. > > A third well was drilled at a spot on an adjacent lease, where the > fault disappeared from seismic view. The researchers missed the > stream but hit a fair-size reservoir, one that is still producing. > > It was here, in 1995, that the scientists ran out of grant money > and PennzEnergy lost interest in continuing. "I'm not discounting > the possibility that there is oil moving into these reservoirs," > says William Van Wie, a PennzEnergy senior vice president. "I > question only the rate." > > Whelan hasn't lost interest, however, and is seeking to investigate > further the mysterious vents and seeps. While industry geologists > have generally assumed such eruptions are merely cracks in a > shallow oil reservoir, they aren't sure. > > Noting that many of the seeps are occurring in deep water, rather > than in the relative shallows of the continental shelf, Whelan > wonders if they may link a deeper source. > > This summer, a tiny submarine chartered by a Louisiana State > University researcher will attempt to install a series of measuring > devices on vents near the Eugene Island property. Whelan hopes this > will give her some idea of how quickly Eugene Island is refilling. > "We need to know if we're talking years or if we're talking > hundreds of thousands of years," she says. > > > Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ > > Please let us stay on topic and be civil. > > OM > > > > YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS > > Visit your group "cia-drugs" on the web. > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! 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